Nearly half of all cellphone calls next year will come from scammers, according to First Orion, a company that provides phone carriers and their customers caller ID and call blocking technology.The Arkansas-based firm projects an explosion of incoming spam calls, marking a massive leap from 3.7 percent of total calls in 2017 to more than 29 percent this year, to a projected 45 percent by early 2019."Year after year, the scam call epidemic bombards consumers at... [Read More]

The biotech Spark Therapeutics needed a way to measure improvements to a patient's quality of life when testing a new treatment for a rare eye disorder. So Spark created a maze-like course, which included simulated obstacles like holes and grass, for use in key research. We spoke with Dan Chung, the clinical ophthalmic lead at Spark, about the company's efforts to do that in a rigorous and standardized way. Spark's treatment was approved in the US in late 2017. The one-time therapy is called Luxturna and has a list price of $850,000. And Spark agreed to be acquired by... [Read More]

Hours after his bizarre rap performance near Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles, a man who had cut his electronic monitoring device off his leg was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend. Police later found a rap video with more incriminating evidence. [Read More]

Stunned residents of the Bahamas surveyed the wreckage of their homes and officials struggled to assess the number killed by Hurricane Dorian, as the storm bore down on the South Carolina coast, threatening record flooding on Thursday. [Read More]

Prime Minister Boris Johnson kept up his push for an early election as a way to break Britain's Brexit impasse, as lawmakers moved to stop the U.K. leaving the European Union next month without a divorce deal. Johnson suffered another setback as his own brother quit the government on Thursday, saying it was not serving the national interest. Johnson remained determined to secure an election, after lawmakers on Wednesday rejected his attempt to trigger a snap poll. House of Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg told Parliament that a vote would be held Monday on a new... [Read More]

I will not be anonymous. My name is Mihae Yu, M.D., F.A.C.S. My father, who was a celebrated general and instrumental in winning the Korean War, told me that if you cannot be held responsible for what you say for fear of retribution, then do not speak, because you will not have the courage to carry out your thoughts. [Read More]

The Amazon inferno, environmental deregulation, lackluster ideas such as the Green New Deal  all point to a deepening climate crisis. Meanwhile, the demand for energy grows as rising middle classes in Asia, Africa and South America want and deserve the lives affluent Westerners have had since World War II: a lifestyle largely responsible for our carbon-rich atmosphere today. [Read More]